


Perfect Aim

by SuburbanSun



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, F/M, Fluff, Meet-Cute, Neighbors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 17:49:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5099978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuburbanSun/pseuds/SuburbanSun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Yeah, so… I may have accidentally piloted a drone into your bedroom window.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perfect Aim

**Author's Note:**

  * For [somefitzsimmonsfan (someshipperfan)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/someshipperfan/gifts).



> Wow, canon's a mess, huh? Let's hang out in AU world forever! 
> 
> For somefitzsimmonsfan, who requested Fitzsimmons + "Well, this is awkward..." when I last did fic prompts on Tumblr.

Jemma had just sat down with a cup of tea and her tablet when she heard a sharp knock at the door. She frowned-- she wasn’t expecting anyone--but headed for the entryway, setting her mug on the kitchen counter.

Whoever was on the other side of the door knocked again. “Just a second!” she called out, before reaching out and pulling the door open.

“Hi.”

The man who stood on her TARDIS doormat looked a bit disheveled, as if he’d been running. His blue eyes were wide as he held up one hand in an awkward sort of wave.

“Hi,” she said slowly.

“Well…” The man reached up to scratch at the side of his jaw, bouncing on the balls of his feet just a little. “This is awkward."

“A bit, yes.” She offered him a polite smile that turned into a real one when he laughed at that.

“Yeah, so… I may have accidentally piloted a drone into your bedroom window.”

 _Hang on, what?_ Jemma shifted her weight from one foot to the other, brow furrowed. “You did what?”

The man sighed. “Can I just--” He gestured at her apartment, and she nodded, stepping back so he could enter and shutting the door behind him. “I’m sorry to barge in like this. It’s just that it’s my best prototype-- my baby, really.” He cringed. “Not my baby, that sounds weird. I just-- I’ve spent a lot of time working on it, and I finally think I got it right, and now it’s--”

“--in my bedroom.”

“Yeah.”

“Why were you flying a drone toward my bedroom, anyway?”

His expression turned a little indignant at that. “Well, maybe I haven’t _quite_ perfected its balancing apparatus. I was _trying_ to fly it down to the mailboxes to pick up my mail.” He nodded at her living room window, which faced out onto the street. “I live in the building across the way. Sixth floor.”

Jemma chuckled. “You couldn’t get the mail yourself? With your hands? Like a regular person?”

He balked at her. “Why would I do that when I have a _drone_?”

 _He has a point._ She picked up her tea from the countertop and took a sip before wrinkling her nose. “My tea’s gone cold. Would you like me to make you a cup? Then we can hunt for your drone.”

“Please.”

Over tea, Jemma learned that the man’s name was Fitz; that he was an engineer at the University where she worked, and yet they’d never met (“They don’t let us out of the basement lab much, I suppose.”); that he liked his tea with a splash of milk and far too many sugars, and that his face lit up in a pleasing way when he told her about his latest project, this drone. She hoped she looked equally as happy and at ease when discussing the things she worked on in the biochem lab. It was quite appealing.

“So,” she said, setting down her empty mug with a smile. “Shall we head to the bedroom?”

Fitz’s eyes widened and he coughed on his last sip of tea, but then collected himself and nodded. “Lead the way.”

As she opened the door to her room, she silently hoped that there wasn’t anything embarrassing lying about, but of course, it was exactly as she’d left it-- bright, neat and homey. The breeze from the open window wafted her yellow and grey curtains gently, and they both looked at the spot just below the window-- no drone.

“Hmm. I know it flew in here. I saw it.” Fitz dropped to his hands and knees, checking under the bed. “Not under here.”

Jemma pulled up the curtains on either side of the window, but it wasn’t hiding there. When she turned around, Fitz had stretched out face down and sideways across her bed, his head peeking over the other side. She couldn’t help but laugh at the sight, raising her eyebrows at the strip of skin at his hip that was revealed when his shirt rode up.

“Not down here either,” he said, voice muffled. He pushed back off the bed and stood up, smoothing out his blue button-down. “What other kind of hiding places have you got in here?”

“A few. But I’m not sure how a drone could have flown through my window and opened my closet door, for instance.”

He scratched just behind his ear, his tongue poking out in concentration as he glanced around the room. “You’re right. But it didn’t just disappear. I haven’t quite sorted out the cloaking… yet.” He turned around in a slow circle, eyes drifting from one corner of the room to the next, and still-- nothing. He finally met her eyes, looking baffled.

“You’re sure it came in here?”

“Of course I’m sure, Jemma, I saw it with my own two eyes.” He put both hands on his hips with a huff. “It flew into the third window from the Jackson Avenue side of the building on the sixth floor.”

“Fifth floor.”

“No, I said sixth.”

“And I said fifth. I live on the fifth floor.”

His mouth opened and closed a few times before he cleared his throat with a nod. “So you do. I must have miscounted on the stairs. It certainly _felt_ like six floors,” he grumbled. “Erm, I suppose that means…”

Jemma pointed up at her ceiling. “Drone’s up there with Mrs. Higgins and her cats.”

“Ah. Yes, well.” He awkwardly shuffled out of her bedroom into the living room, then whirled around so fast she almost walked into him. She caught herself with a hand on his shoulder, and he glanced down at it before speaking. “Thank you, Jemma. For helping me look. And for letting a stranger into your apartment to start with. And for the tea.”

She squeezed his shoulder gently. “It was my pleasure. I’m sorry I don’t have your drone! I would love to see it sometime,” she said, tilting her head to the side. Perhaps they could meet up for tea, or grab drinks near the University-- or he could come back over to her apartment. Any of the three would do.

“Oh, um, yes! Right. I should, ah, go _retrieve_ it,” he said, grinning at her as he walked backward toward her front door. “I’m thinking of calling it the Golden Retriever, what do you think?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe keep brainstorming names.”

“Right. So…” He stood with his hand on the doorknob, eyes on her as she leaned back against her kitchen counter. Just when she was about to suggest they make it a point to see each other again, he swung the door open and stepped into the hallway with a wave. “Thanks again, Jemma,” he said, and after one last look at her, he was gone, off to gather his drone from the correct floor.

She frowned, but it seemed that was that, so she picked up her tablet and made a fresh cup of tea and sat down for the afternoon of reading she’d planned, trying not to dwell too much on missed opportunities.

\---

Less than an hour later, she was jarred from an article on light-activatable chemical switches for transmembrane receptors by a loud thump from the direction of her bedroom. She tensed for a second, relaxing only when she realized that home intruders were unlikely to scale the side of a building.

Still, she walked warily toward her bedroom door, grasping the knob for a moment before pulling it open quickly.

There, in the middle of the patch of floor beneath the window, sat a small black drone.

Jemma let out a laugh, crouching down to pick it up. The mechanics of it were fascinating-- she wondered if he would mind if she held onto it for a bit. Her mind had already concocted a number of ideas for attachments or mechanisms that could assist with her lab work.

She turned the drone over to investigate the other side and noticed a compartment with a small white label that read “OPEN ME” in block letters. She unfastened it and out fell a folded piece of paper.

_“Jemma,_

_Found the drone. You weren’t joking about Mrs. H’s cats. Thanks for your help._

_P.S. I should have asked you this an hour ago. Dinner tonight?_

_Fitz.”_

Below his name he’d scrawled a phone number. Jemma grinned down at the note in her hand, her gaze drifting to the drone in her other, then to the open window. She scanned the building across the street, one floor up, and saw him-- one hand braced on the windowsill, biting his lip nervously.

She put the drone down on her dresser and darted out in the living room to grab her phone. When she returned to the window, already having dialed his number, he looked even more worried, but smiled when he glanced down at his caller ID.

“Hello?”

“I have to return your drone.”

“Oh-- um, yeah, I mean, that’s totally--”

“Why don’t you come over around 7 to get it? I’ll order takeout and then maybe you can show me everything it can do.”

She could see his grin across the street and she could hear it over the phone. “There are six other Golden Retrievers, all with different functions. I could bring those, too? Only if you’re interested, that is.”

Jemma chuckled. “I’m definitely interested. Just--”

“Yeah?”

“We’re really going to have to work on that name.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Want to hang out on Tumblr? I'm unbreakablejemmasimmons over there!


End file.
